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Fall Gardening Ideas that Will help Improve your Garden, and Prepare it for Winter

These fall gardening chores will make your landscaping and garden look better for the cold winter months.Now is the time to start planting your fall gardens. Mastergardening.com has everything you need. Buy now for great fall deals!

And next spring you will be glad you have it over with so you can get on with your gardens.

The photo above shows a row of mums in my side yard. I divided these this spring. They where huge last fall.

This photo shows 2 of the new mums I gained when I split the original mums.

Hopefully seeing how I gained these beautiful mums will inspire you to try some of the fall gardening tips I have for you.
I love Fall. The air turns cooler and getting outside is much more pleasurable. I am not a hot weather fan.

I love gardening, and in the hot months I have to limit my time outside to mornings or evenings.

This time of year - unless it is raining outside, like it is the day I am writing this page, the temperatures are much more desirable.

So this is the perfect time to write a page on fall gardening.

I also love the fall colors as the leaves turn shades of orange, red, gold and brown before they fall.

Suggested Reading for all types of Gardening

Enjoy the cooler Tempuratures for a change, It is nice to get a break from the Summer Heat

Open the windows, let the breeze come in and give the AC a break.

That is also a way to save on utility bills. I like that idea too!

We open our windows each spring and fall to enjoy the fresh air coming inside our home. Our cats, Tom and Coco,love it too, they find the first opened window immediately.

Make yourself a cup of hot cocoa and read up on a few things that we do around our home to insure that our winter landscape looks good.

Then get to work with your fall gardening clean up and maintenance, and dream about how beautiful your efforts now, will make your garden look this winter and next spring.

These Fall Gardening Ideas and Tips WILL Prove to be Part of Your Normal Routine as Your Gardening Skills Grow.

Dead head your flowers, actually this is something that should be done from mid to late summer and fall. Deadhead regularly as part of your fall gardening routine.

Some flowers require more attention than others, but all of the flowers we grow are easy.

If you have annuals such as zinnias and marigolds they will benefit from frequent deadheading. You can also enjoy the fresh cut flowers inside hour home.

So while doing your regular fall gardening maintenance of your flowers, reward yourself with a fresh bouquet of flowers from your home or office.

I grow lots of annuals from seed. This means that I do alot of deadheading these flowers through out the summer. Without proper maintenance they would not survive until fall.

The photo below shows zinnias before I will removed the last bloom and disposed of the flowers.

Usually these flowers last until mid to late October.

Deadhead Flowers to Extend their Life, and Bloom Time.

The photo below shows the annual flower - marigold. If you take a good look at the photo you can see that the flower has alot of dead blooms on it.

I took this picture to show you what the blooms look like that need to be removed.

I removed the spent blooms after taking the picture. The marigold should last until frost with proper deadheading.

If I did not take proper care of it, it would just dry up and die early.

I love my flowers, I consider the blooms the reward to lots of hard work. Therefore I want to extend their life as long as I can.

In the fall the mixed marigolds are beautiful colors or orange, yellow and gold.

Most of the colors in my fall gardens are orange, yellow, gold, bronze and purple. I do have one red cosmos climber this year.
I a raspberry morning glory vine.

Both of those are annual flowers and they are still going strong. See photos below.
Deadheading flowers encourages new blooms. The plant puts it's energy into creating new blooms instead of just drying up.

So to lengthen the life of your annuals - show them some love - deadhead them!

We have had a very HOT and DRY summer this year. We have annuals that have given up the struggle for survival much quicker this year than in some previous years.

We water frequently, but this year we have had extremely long periods of hot dry weather.

I have already started removing zinnias and sunflowers from my landscape.

If you save flower seeds make sure to remove the dead blooms from the annual flowers before you dispose of them.

Pull annuals up out of the ground. They will not return next year. Annual flowers live for one growing season.

Perennial flowers will return next year. So do not remove them from the ground and dispose of them. Instead, after they have finished blooming for the year, cut them back.

You should be able to tell by the way they look when they are ready. Perennial flowers turn brown and don't bloom any more.

If you have a compost bin, add your dead annuals to the compost pile. Don't add weeds. Throw away weeds with seed heads on them. You don't want weeds thriving in your compost bin. So it would be smarter to just throw away all weeds.

I don't have a compost bin yet- but it is on the to-do-list for next year.

The photo below show my yard waste container filled to the brim with annuals I removed from my garden. This is my backyard area that we are still developing.

We made a daylilly garden and a cottage garden in this area this spring. We moved the fence forward about 20 feet to turn the unused side yard into part of our backyard.

The path is still unfinished, and I plan on adding several perennial flowers to the cottage garden later this fall when we divide our perennials. I planted lots of seeds in the cottage garden this spring. The flowers included sunflowers(already removed) marigolds, zinnia. There are a few perennials mixed into the cottage garden.

The grass is going to be removed and perennials will be planted on both sides of the walkway. Lots of changes planned, that seems to be the way it is around here!

The photo above shows red cosmos vine (annual) growing over a metal obelisk I have in the corner of my secret garden.

The photo below is morning glory vine (annual)growing up a forked post on the corner of my new raised bed garden.

The raised bed garden joins the new day lily garden that turns into a cottage garden.

This area of the yard is much more interesting to take a stroll through it now, than a large area of grass we had before.

Divide Overgrown Perennials- Division is Good for Them and you get to Plant more Flowers!

Plant More Flowers! To me that is always good news. I know by now you are thinking, all this sounds like alot of hard work.

But believe me, next spring when your already have beautiful perennials growing you will be glad you split your overgrown perennials in the fall.

Most flowers seem to thrive better when divided in the fall in my experience. I am sure that varies with the type of plant. So do your research on your flowers to determine what is best for them.

As part of my fall gardening chores last year I divided mums.
I have divided mums in the spring and fall. The mums divided in the fall were much larger and healthier looking than the mums divided in the spring.

And yes mums bloom in the fall. SO wait until they are finished blooming for the year and cut them back to just above the ground.

Then divide them if you have mums that are growing so large that they are no longer pretty, if they droop, (falling over and looking bad when in bloom) it is time to divide them.

I dig up the entire plant and split it with a sharp shovel.

The bigger the mum, the harder this is to do. So don't let them get to large before you divide them.

I had 8 mums, after dividing them I have 28. That means that they were way to large.

I will be dividing some of them again next fall as part of my fall gardening chores, before they get to big again..

Day lilies should be divided about every 3 years. That depends on the variety too.

Sedum will definitely get overgrown and droop with out proper division. I have started several new plants from sedum divisions.
I have more to do this fall.

Proper maintenance of your flowers doing the fall gardening chores I just mentioned will give you more flowers to enjoy next year without having to buy more plants.

If you have plans to add a flower garden to your landscape, take divisions from your existing plants to start the garden.

The photo below shows a new garden I have this year started from seed I saved last year. You can do the same thing in your flower gardens.

Transplant seedlings- some bushes such as rose of Sharon have seedlings that come up during the year. If you need to have more of this variety of plant dig up the seedling and plant it in the spring or fall.

We recently added more to our cottage garden area, to add more privacy under our deck.